Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers Are Very Aware of Their Different Approaches to Donald Trump

The ultra-contentious, Letterman versus Leno era of late-night television is emphatically over. Though there are more hosts in that space than ever these days, all of them appear to respect one another; many will even cross network lines to appear on each other's shows.

Seth Meyers, of course, didn’t have to go quite that far to do a guest appearance with Jimmy Fallon this week. Late Night and Tonight both air on NBC, and they shoot in the very same building. Despite those similarities—and that both men share a history with Saturday Night Live and an executive producer in Lorne Michaels—their respective series differ in tone, style, and, perhaps more importantly, their willingness to directly take on President Donald Trump. And that chasm may have never been more obvious than it was Wednesday night.

Meyers dropped by Fallon's ostensibly because he’s being honored this weekend at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual gala, which this year will also fete Meryl Streep and Moonlight. Really, though, the visit served as a way for Fallon to acknowledge how the man who took over Late Night from him has really started hitting his stride—thanks in no small part to Meyers’s willingness to take Trump to task, though Fallon didn’t quite say that part outright.

And though both did their best to be genial and charming, their conversation couldn’t help but get awkward—especially when Fallon brought up his own relationship with Trump, which has been. . . historically different from Meyers’s:

Fallon: And we had him on the show, and I messed his hair up, and I got a —Meyers, joking: No, I didn’t hear about that. [Laughter]Fallon: You didn’t? [Laughter] Yeah, it got a pretty big reaction. Yeah —Meyers: Yeah, but you know what? I was insulted by the reaction.Fallon: Really?Meyers: Because I know after that happened, you took some heat.Fallon: Oh, yeah.Meyers: And some people said you are the reason he won.Fallon: Yeah.Meyers: And I’m so insulted by that, because I am the reason he won.

There are moments of levity in this clip, to be sure; Fallon is very much in his element when he’s asking Meyers to recount some of his Late Night’s worst flops, and Meyers does his best to lay on the self-deprecation even when Fallon’s praising his Late Night. Throughout, though, there’s an unacknowledged wrinkle to their dynamic. Seth Meyers, whose show is increasingly political, is winning increasingly high ratings and critical praise at 12:30 A.M. Jimmy Fallon’s longtime 11:30 P.M. dominance is currently in jeopardy for the first time ever, thanks to Stephen Colbert’s recent ratings surge. (Colbert, like Meyers, is a lot more political than Fallon.) And both men seem all too aware of that.